What a mixed and extraordinary assemblage was seen in the drawing-room of the president of the National Assembly!  There were the representatives of old France, the brilliant members of the old nobility:  the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, the Count de Montmorency, the Marquis de Caulaincourt, the Prince de Salm-Cherbourg, the Princess von Hohenzollern, Madame de Montesson, the wife of the old Duke d’Orleans; and alongside of these names of the ancient regime, new names rose up.  There were the deputies of the National Assembly--Barnave, Mounier, Thouvet, Lafayette, and the favorite of the people, the great Mirabeau.  Old France and Young France met here in this drawing-room of Josephine on neutral grounds, and the beautiful viscountess, full of grace and prudence, offered to them both the honors of her house.  She listened with modest bashfulness to the words of the great tribunes of the people, and oftentimes with a smile or a soft word she reconciled the royalists, those old friends who sought in this drawing-room for the Viscountess de Beauharnais, and found there only the wife of the president of the National Assembly.

The saloon of Josephine was soon spoken of, and seemed as a haven in which the refined, elegant manners, the grace, the wit, the esprit, had been saved from the stormy flood of political strife.  Every one sought the privilege of being admitted into this drawing-room, whose charming mistress in her own gentleness and grace received the homage of all parties, pleased every one by her loveliness, her charms, the fine, exquisite tact with which she managed at all times the sentiments of the company, and with which she knew how to guide the conversation so that it would never dwindle into political debates or into impassioned speeches.

However violent was the tempest of faction outside, Josephine endeavored that in the interior of her home the serene peace of happiness should prevail.  For she was now happy again, and all the liveliness, all the joys of youth, had again found entrance into her mind.  The anguish endured, the tears shed, had also brought their blessing; they had strengthened and invigorated her heart; with their grave, solemn memories they preserved Josephine, that child of the South, of the sun, and of joy, from that light frivolity which otherwise is so often the common heritage of the Creoles.

The viscount had now the satisfaction which ten years ago, at the beginning of his married life, he had so intently longed for, the satisfaction of seeing his wife occupied with grave studies, with the culture of her own mind and talents.  It was to him a ravishment to see Josephine in her drawing-room in earnest conversation with Buffon, and with all the aptitude of a naturalist speak of the organization and formation of the different families of plants; he exulted in the open praise paid to her when, with her fine, far-reaching voice, she sang the songs of her home, which she herself accompanied on the harp; he was proud when, in her